The following are beyond the scope of the FAQ, but have been found useful for specific use-cases or for advanced users.

Simulate actions from the current switch state (for debugging)

• opam upgrade --show-actions (stop at the action summary dialog)
• opam upgrade --dry-run (display only)
• if you really want to try out the results:
  • opam switch export testing-state.export
  • opam switch tmp-testing --alias-of system
  • opam switch import testing-state.export --fake
  • try actions with --fake (registers them in OPAM, but doesn't actually run the build/install commands)
  • revert to normal: opam switch <previous>; opam switch remove tmp-testing
• Experiment with the solver:
  • opam <request> --cudf=cudf-file
  • or opam config cudf-universe >cudf-file-1.cudf
  • run e.g. aspcud with aspcud cudf-file-1.cudf /dev/stdout CRITERIA
  • admin-scripts/cudf-debug.ml cudf-file-1.cudf may help with conflicts

Install in all switches

Not supported natively at the moment, but it's being considered. Quick hack:

for switch in $(opam switch list -s -i); do
  opam install --switch $switch PACKAGE
done

You may want to add --yes if you're confident.

Update OPAM environment within emacs

You may use the following snippet to define an opam-env function:

(defun opam-env ()
  (interactive nil)
  (dolist (var (car (read-from-string (shell-command-to-string "opam config env --sexp"))))
    (setenv (car var) (cadr var))))

You may want to run this at emacs startup if it doesn't inherit the proper shell environment.

Easily provide a set of packages for a group of users to install

The easiest way is to create a package with your prerequisites as depends and have them pin that. A quick way to host the file is to use a Gist. Create one with minimal contents and listing your packages as dependencies -- the file name has to be opam:

opam-version: "1.2"
name: "ocaml101"
version: "0.1"
maintainer: "Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert@ocamlpro.com>"
depends: [ "menhir" { = "20140422" }
           "merlin" { >= "2" }
           "ocp-indent"
           "ocp-index" ]

Save that and get the HTTPS clone URL. All that is needed then is to run:

$ opam pin add ocaml101 <HTTPS clone URL>

Furthermore, opam update will then pick up any modification you made to the gist.